World Battlefronts: From Madang to Kavieng

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By land, by sea, by air the Allies in the Southwest Pacific closed on Rabaul:

New Britain. General MacArthur's men (Marine veterans of Guadalcanal) had won their objective on New Britain's western tip: the Japs' two Cape Gloucester air strips, 250 miles from Rabaul. With an accurate pre-invasion bombardment, with Sherman tanks, heavy artillery and pillbox-killing flamethrowers, they had overwhelmed the Jap defenses in four days and a few hours. Now they pressed into the jungle hinterland, where a Jap remnant had dragged artillery to shell the airfield. Enemy resistance was fanatic. At this spot alone, almost 1,000 Japs were slain, many in suicidal counterattacks. Reported Navy Secretary Frank Knox: for 117 marines killed at Cape Gloucester, 2,100 Japs had died.

New Guinea. General MacArthur's men (Sixth Army veterans of Buna) had landed at Saidor on the northern New Guinea coast, found scant opposition, lost three men dead, buried eleven Japs, seized the settlement's grass huts, coconut groves, rubber plantations (the first recovered from the Japs), an unused air strip. Then they fanned out, trapping Jap patrols who were skirmishing with Australians some 60 miles down the coast. With an Australian column poised inland in the Ramu Valley, they set up a two-pronged threat to Madang, the next important Jap base northwest of Finsch-haven. One day last week General MacArthur's fliers plastered the Madang area with 243 tons of high explosive. The next Allied landing might strike that way—the most direct way to the General's lost Philippines.

The Solomons. From the fighter runway at Empress Augusta Bay, from new bomber dromes on Bougainville and Treasury Islands, Allied planes ranged north. They raked Jap barge traffic coming down the Pacific islands to Rabaul. Daily they swept over Rabaul's five airfields, flushed as many as 80 Jap Zeros in one day, knocked down as many as 18. Nightly they struck farther: at Kavieng, on New Ireland, a way station between Truk and Rabaul. U.S. carrier-based planes pounded Kavieng's shipping. On New Year's Day they left two cruisers, one destroyer blazing; three days later, they hit two destroyers.